


Indebted

by sablier_bloque



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-22
Updated: 2012-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-08 07:10:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/440522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sablier_bloque/pseuds/sablier_bloque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint Barton is sent to kill a young girl named Natalia Romanova. He makes a different call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indebted

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings** : There are mentions of underage rape, and there is a scene where an underaged Natasha uses a sexual act for an ulterior motive, but **there is no underage sex between Clint and Natasha**. Also warnings for graphic violence, sex, and language.
> 
> Once upon a time, I came across this [fanart](http://jorston.tumblr.com/post/22799826101) by [jorston](http://jorston.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr. She has her own headcanon underneath the artwork specifically stating that it wasn't meant to be Clint/Natasha, but my mind would NOT let it go. So, deepest apologies to jorston for bastardizing your beautiful artwork.
> 
> This is movie-verse with special canon guest stars, Marvel.com and Wikipedia! If you're a purist, you'll probably hate this.
> 
> Thanks to autumn_lilacs for a superb beta.

She’s just a kid. A fucking kid.

She’s maybe 15, and Clint’s being generous with the estimate. Her bare feet are pooled in a growing puddle of blood, her clothes too big for her small frame. Her right hand is still tight on her gun as she surveys the warehouse of dead men around her. She is breathing hard; Clint is positioned in the rafters above her head, but he can hear it. There is something about the stance of her body and the flat look in her eyes that tells him that her short, shallow breaths have nothing to do with fear and everything to do with adrenaline. 

His arrow is still trained on her, but if Fury thinks he’s killing a goddamn teenage girl, he’s crazier than Clint thought.

She turns to run and he yells, “Wait!” before realizing that giving away his position probably isn’t the best idea. Her gun is aimed at him quicker than he’s comfortable with, though he knows she can’t see him from down there.

He drops his bow and arrow to the floor below and lowers himself with the cable until he’s kneeling at her level. She walks up, gun pointed directly at his forehead.

“Why are you here?” she asks, her English accented but obviously strong.

He swallows and looks her in the eyes.

“To take you home.”

///

“I could’ve killed you if I wanted to. I don’t miss,” he says, glancing to his weapon on the floor.

“There are worse things than death,” she replies. There’s too much conviction in her words to suggest that she simply read that in a book somewhere.

“Who did this to you?” Because he knows about things that are worse than death, but his life has been fucked up for years, and just because he knew that at her age, doesn’t mean she should.

Her answer is a tightened jaw combined with added pressure to the gun at his head.

“I was sent here to kill you, Natasha. But I’m not going to do that. Not going to do anything worse than that either.”

///

Clint’s been holed up in an old cheese factory for years, with a mattress on the floor and a hot plate for a kitchen.

“I’ll get us a real place,” he says when she follows him inside for the first time.

“This is adequate,” she replies.

“No, you need your own space, and I will, too.”

She’s 14 years old, or at least she said so when he asked. She has a convoluted history in her head about her past that he knows isn’t true, not according to her case file, anyway.

So he sits her down with the biggest pizza from the menu with extra cheese and bacon before plopping her dossier in front of her. He didn’t even look it over himself until they got back, but it’s all there: Natalia “Natasha” Romanova, murdered parents, special ops beginning at age six by Red Room, brainwashing, phony memories. Her eyes narrow as she reads, the only evidence that the file affects her.

“A 14-year-old shouldn’t know how to kill a dozen men with a clean headshot. Hell, a 14-year-old shouldn’t even know how to use a semi-automatic, Natasha. These people fucked you up.”

She looks at him, resolution in her eyes, but she says nothing.

He makes her take the bed, and he sleeps in the loft above the factory to give her as much space as possible. Well, he tries to sleep. It’s hard to rest when there is someone moving and breathing in your own space for the first time in years.

He hears her footsteps on the stairs to the loft right before dawn, and he feigns sleep. His arm is already under his pillow, so it’s easy to grab the knife he keeps there. His back is turned, but he hears her knees hit the floor beside him. He waits for her hands around his neck, for the click of the chamber from the gun she took from his nightstand, but there is nothing.

Nothing, that is, until her hand slides over his hip and into his boxers. His hand catches hers and yanks it away.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“I can do this for you,” she says, biting her lip, and looking up at him through her eyelashes, playing up her innocence like a goddamn professional.

Clint adds “teaching seduction to underage girls” to the laundry list of shit these people did to her.

“You’re a kid,” he says. “This is not what we have going on here.”

“I’m young, but I know what I’m doing.” She smiles, flips her red curls behind her back, and tries to reach for him with her other hand. “I’m good.”

He stands up and moves to the other side of the loft. “No, we don’t do that. You don’t do that to anyone, not right now.” He scrubs his hand through his hair and sighs. “You don’t _have_ to do that anymore. Can you understand that?”

She looks down and visibly swallows, but gives a small nod.

“Look, maybe this isn’t the best idea. I know a couple of ladies that I work with that could probably look after you.”

“No!” She yells and stands up “Absolutely not. No one else. I won’t do it again.”

And this is it, the first time he sees her act like a real human being.

“Okay.” He exhales a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “Okay.”

///

It takes three weeks for S.H.I.E.L.D. to realize that Clint didn’t kill Natasha. He’s surprised that it takes them that long. Nick Fury knocks on their door with two agents behind him, asking for a little chat.

“You want to tell me why you kidnapped an underage enemy of the United States and concealed her in your…” He trails off, glancing around the factory as if it will help him describe it. “Place of residence.”

“I’ve offered Agent Barton crucial information,” Natasha says, “on Red Room’s Black Widow Special Ops Division: names, organizations, sources of funds and weapons. In exchange, I asked to lay low while Red Room thinks me dead.”

Clint’s glad that Fury’s looking directly at Natasha because his look of disbelief would surely give her away. He’s ten years older than her and he still wouldn’t be able to negotiate with Fury like this. “I am also offering my services in exchange for my life and freedom. I specialize in interrogation, hand-to-hand and armed combat, and torture, if need be.” She smiles smartly. “But I’ve always found that my particular brand of interrogation works just fine in finding out information.”

“Okay,” Fury replies. “Let’s take you—”

“One more thing,” she interrupts. “I stay with Agent Barton.”

He looks at Clint and turns back to Natasha. “Any particular reason?”

She grabs a pen and paper and starts a list of names. “The first man you’re looking for is Ivan Sazonov. He recruits the girls.”

///

Clint didn’t pick the factory for its quaintness or location; he picked it for the space. The inside houses his own archery range, climbing wall, and a workshop to make his own arrows.

Natasha wakes him up one morning about a month into their new arrangement. “Coffee,” she says, handing him a mug. “Now, teach me how to shoot.”

He teaches her the proper stance, using only the tips of his fingers to move her arms into correct position. He is always so wary, so careful when touching her. His heart pounds angrily when he thinks of the men that used her before she pressed her gun to his head.

Natasha isn’t a bad shot once she gets the hang of it, and she shoots so much that day that her palms blister. “Guns will be a bitch for a week,” she says.

“Sorry,” he replies. “We can get you some archery gloves.”

“No, it was fun. I liked it.” She gives him a genuine smile for the first time. “Just want to see what it’s like in case you get knocked out on the job and I run out of bullets.”

Natasha has two handguns, and Fury has authorized clearance for her to use their shooting range, but nothing has been said about her going out on the field. He got it in his head that she simply trained for protection, or even for something to do because he’s probably not the best company.

“Natasha, I don’t think…” he stands up and retracts his bow to encase it. “You don’t have to do field work. I’m sure Fury is appreciative for the information.”

“I told Fury I’m offering my services. If you think I’m sitting this out after what they did to me—”

“You’re too young to do this kind of thing.”

She is behind him suddenly, left hand grabbing his hair and right hand pressing a knife to his neck. “I could kill you right now,” she says, barely over his shoulder because she is so much smaller than he is. “Slice this through your jugular, break your neck, shoot a bullet into that pretty skull of yours. You think I can’t do the same to them? To anyone? Because I’m too young?” She throws the knife to the ground and pushes him away.

“Do not hinder me or speak of my age again.”

///

Clint’s known a lot of different people in his life, from street circuses to S.H.I.E.L.D., but he’s never know anyone like her.

They train daily in hand-to-hand, and she continues to kick the shit out of him.

“You’re killing me,” he says one morning, easing down the stairs one at a time from the loft, barely able to move.

She laughs, well, cackles, more like. “Getting slow in your old age, Barton.”

“I’d make you pay for that if it didn’t hurt so bad.”

The first time he knocks her flat on the floor, he can’t stop himself from fist pumping the air.

“Awww,” he says, standing over her. “Does the baby need a naptime?”

She kicks his legs out from under him, leaving him flat on his back next to her. “Fuck off,” she says, but there’s lightness to it, a smile on her lips. She punches him lightly in the leg before standing up and tensing her body. “Again.”

///

She turns 15 en route to Russia, on an aircraft with a handful of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

“Not the best way to spend a birthday,” Clint says to her. She has been silent the whole flight, focused.

“Vengeance is a sweet gift,” she whispers, not looking at him.

“To help with your vengeance,” he says, holding a box out to her. She opens it and sees a two-tone 9mm heavy inside of it.

Both of the guns strapped to her thighs are S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued; the one she first pressed to his head months ago is buried in the past that is Russia.

“So you have your own,” he says. He debated on it, wondered if he should even get her something for her birthday. He doesn’t mind that no one celebrates his birthday now, but when he was a kid, even her age, he hated that it passed without recognition.

She snaps in a new magazine and rubs her thumb over the barrel before loading the chamber.

“This is…” She trails off, looks at him with clear green eyes. She takes his hand and gives it a squeeze, the first time she’s touched him since that night. “Thank you.”

He knows by the difference in her voice that her birthday was never acknowledged either, that she expected absolutely nothing. He squeezes back and doesn’t let go of her hand.

///

Natasha said that this wouldn’t be easy. There would only be a few Black Widow trainees at headquarters during the night, but they are still deadly, no matter their age.

“I am the best,” she says to Fury, “but they are almost as good.” The girls aren’t the objective here, at least not to Clint, and he’s hoping it isn’t to Fury. The plan is to take out the bosses and the minions of Red Room, not the young women they are distorting. Natasha says she wants Sazonov for herself, and Clint’s perfectly okay with letting her have him.

He’s nervous as hell, if he’s honest with himself. This is just another mission for S.H.I.E.L.D., but for Natasha, this is personal. She’s never given him details, but he’s read her file. And no matter what she says, she is still a young girl, and he’s scared that being back will be too much for her.

But seeing Natasha in training and seeing her in action are two completely different things. When they train, she will yell and laugh. Her pleasure is obvious in the physical effort (and in kicking his ass, probably). Now she is silent, almost scarily so. Here, she doesn’t look fifteen and too young for this mission. She looks every bit as deadly as she’s promised. She comes upon a guard with his back turned, and she breaks his neck before he even realizes her existence.

She looks behind her once, and he realizes she is searching for him when her eyes find his. Something in his gut pulls him toward her, and he quickens his stride to walk next to her, bow and arrow in hand.

Then the storm starts. Red Room is alerted of their presence, and her guns come out, each shot a kill. S.H.I.E.L.D. members are split up at this point, and Clint walks backward, arrows shot at enemies who try to attack from behind.

They run into a girl, maybe ten years old, who gasps Natasha’s name. He doesn’t understand what they say to one another, but he understands that Natasha tells her to run, and he’s thankful the girl listens and races in opposite direction.

She leads them to a long hallway that’s eerily quiet. “I’m going for Sazonov,” she whispers. “In that room,” she points with her gun. “Watch me?” Natasha pointedly looks toward the ceiling tiles and he nods.

He listens for the sounds of voices once he is in the rafters, trying to estimate an area that he can see but not be seen. He loosens a ceiling tile slowly, as quietly as possible. Clint crouches and readies his bow when he sees an older man, balding and fat, lounging in a dark leather armchair.

Sazonov beckons with the curl of his finger, and Natasha kneels in front of him. He can barely see her face, but he sees Sazonov grab her chin and rub his finger over her lips. His voice is quiet, but it is rough with arousal, and Clint’s stomach twists sharply. It takes every ounce of self-restraint in his body to not unleash a dozen arrows into the bastard’s body.

Natasha unzips Sazonov’s pants, pulls out his prick. Clint can’t… he can’t fucking do this. She obviously wants this kill for herself, but she could’ve just walked in and shot him. What the fuck is she doing? Her mouth descends and his eyes avert to the floor. He can’t handle seeing her do _that_.

But then he sees her grab a knife from her ankle sheath, and she pulls off and thrusts the knife into Sazonov’s dick, pinning it to the armchair. She leaps up and screams at him, punches him over and over, consumed with rage. Clint shouts her name but she deaf to it, all senses turned off by her anger.

He drops down. He grabs her and in one swift motion pulls her away and puts her new gun in her hand. “Just shoot him,” he whispers, but it’s like Sazonov flipped a switch by touching her, and she is senseless, completely inside herself. “Tasha, come on.” He stands behind her, moving her arms to hold the gun toward Sazonov’s face. Clint curls his finger over hers and pulls the trigger. He hopes it will be enough, that she will still consider it her own vengeance. He doesn’t want to take that away from her.

He doesn’t want to take anything away from her.

///

He has to carry her out of there, her body slung over his shoulder and into the back of the van waiting in a nearby alley. A nameless new kid is in the driver’s seat, serious and, from what Clint’s seen so far, by the book.

“Go,” Clint yells as he shuts the door behind him.

“I’m supposed to wait for Agent Marcus.”

“You can put the fucking car in drive, or I can make you. So you decide.”

“Sir, I’m not authorized--”

“Goddamn it!” Clint gets out of the van, opens the kid’s door, and throws him onto the ground. “Here,” he says, tossing him a gun in case he needs it, and drives away.

He has to ask for the location of their safe house in his ear-com, and he decides to be nice enough to alert them that a certain agent is in need of a ride.

“Natasha, are you okay?” he asks, feeling stupid as soon as he does. Of course she’s not okay. He looks in his rearview mirror, and sees her sitting in the corner of the van with her knees pulled up to her chest. “I think we’re almost there. Just a few more minutes.”

He doesn’t carry her into the safe house, but he holds her up as they walk inside. Fury is waiting for them, but Clint holds his hand up to silence him, mouthing _later_. He opens doors in the hallway until he finds a bathroom. Clint shuffles her inside and stands her in front of the mirror.

“Come on, let’s brush your teeth,” he says softly. If he did what she just made herself do, he’d probably want to pour bleach directly into his mouth. “Can you do that?” he asks. She hasn’t made a move and he wonders if he’ll have to do it himself. She nods, though, and he finds her a new toothbrush in the medicine cabinet.

She is so removed from herself, her body so pliant, as if he controls her like a marionette. Clint frowns; he’s been taking care of himself for as long as he can remember, but someone else? He doesn’t even know where to start.

“Give me your weapons,” he says after she finishes. “I’ll get your stuff and you can take a shower.” He turns the water on for her, hesitating before leaving to grab her things. Clint doesn’t want to leave her alone, but he can hardly stay with her. “I’ll just… come get me if you need something. Or scream or yell or whatever.”

He sits down with Fury, falling into the chair and suddenly realizing how damn exhausted he is.

“She got Sazonov,” he says, “and some other people, but I don’t know who.”

"The other agents are doing the last sweeping perimeter to ensure we acquired our targets,” Fury replies. “Can't say I'm too appreciative that you two cut out early." Fury’s body is completely relaxed in his armchair; only his voice betrays his annoyance.

Clint looks at him flatly. "I'm sure she'll tell you differently, but she needed to get out of there. And she needs time, too. I don't know what you have planned for her, but she needs a couple of weeks to get her bearings."

"I'm not enthusiastic about this situation to begin with, Barton. She's not the most trustworthy member of this organization."

"Agent Romanova just killed the man who abused her in absolutely every way imaginable. On her fifteenth birthday. I think she deserves a little fucking time."

“She chose to do this.”

“She--” he stops, forces himself to breathe because he’s about two point five seconds from punching Director Nick Fury in the face. “I’m not fucking talking about this right now.”

He gets up and walks away.

“Agent Barton!” Fury yells, but Clint ignores it. He has enough to deal with right now without his own temper getting in the way. S.H.I.E.L.D. has been good to him, Fury has been good to him, but somehow Natasha came along and screwed up his priorities, starting with day one when he couldn’t even follow through on his mission.

Now he’s unsure of himself. Should he wait outside the bathroom for her, or should he give her space? He would know how to handle the Natasha from 24 hours ago (space, definitely, but then some pad thai, an hour training in the factory). Now, though, he’s faced with the girl that he thought he was going to end up with in the beginning.

The bathroom door opens as he’s debating with himself in the hallway. Steam meanders out of the room, curling around her frame before dissipating.

“Let’s get you to bed,” he says, guiding her with a hand on her back, suddenly realizing how much he’s touched her in the last hour; how he used to be so scared to do so. He turns on the overhead light in the bedroom and watches her crawl under the blankets.

Clint sits down next to her and lays a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Do you need anything?" he asks. She shakes her head no. "Okay," he replies. "Okay, just let me know."

"Clint," she whispers, making him pause in the doorway. "Don't." And he hears it, her unspoken plea. So he turns off the light, leaves the door wide open, and crawls into the bed with her. She turns around and burrows into his body, his arms finding themselves instinctively around her. He sometimes can't believe how small she really is, especially when he knows how dangerous she can be.

He wonders if she’ll cry, but she doesn’t. She just shakes; shakes for hours, until she finally melts into sleep against him. It’s not until then that his body will let him rest.

///

He wakes up to her sitting in the chair across from the bed, showered and dressed. Composed. This is not the girl he pulled away from her abuser, this is not the girl he held merely hours before.

“Nat—”

“When I was six years old, I thought Sazonov had saved me from the bad people who killed my parents. I know now that he set up the entire thing. By the age of ten, I could con anyone by pretending that I was lost, giving sob stories to old ladies, playing Lolita to men who looked at me like,” she clears her throat, “like Sazonov always did.” Her eyes finally leave his for a moment, her mask slipping. “When I touched you that night—”

“No,” he stops her, shaking his head. “No, that’s behind us.”

”Okay,” she whispers, then stands up and grabs his hand. Her nails are clean now, no longer rimmed with blood and dirt. “Thank you.”

He’s glad that she stops there, that he doesn’t have to hear more about what they did to her. There’s no way he’d be able to quiet the rage that would build within him if he had to watch her relive her torturous past.

///

He thinks maybe they should go somewhere—the beach, the mountains—give her a few days to recuperate. Clint asks her on their way back to the States.

She shakes her head. “No, we can just go home.”

“It won’t be a big thing. Just a few days to rest and get us back on our game. I’d kind of like some time to chill out.” This isn’t about him at all, but he’ll say what he has to. It takes a few more tries, but she finally says yes.

So they drive three hours south after they get back, windows down in a rusty Camaro that’s as old as he is. He had a girlfriend a couple of years back who insisted they take some romantic getaway, even though they hadn’t been dating that long. That’s how Clint knows about the cabin, and they’re lucky as hell that it’s even available since it’s warming up now and prime for vacationers.

“I don’t have a bathing suit,” Natasha says when she sees the lake behind the house.

Clint shrugs. “We can go buy one.”

“No, it’s not a big deal. I have something I can use.”

“You do know how to swim, right?” He asks, checking to see if there’s anything in the fridge. He doesn’t think swimming’s a common pastime in Russia considering that it’s cold as fuck there, but he could be wrong about that.

“Of course,” she replies. “It was part of our training.”

“Okay, good. You can go swim now. Or sleep. Whatever you want.”

“Let’s swim,” she says. “I’m tired of sleeping.”

She dives right in when they walk out onto the dock, without hesitation. She comes up seconds later, her hair dark and heavy with water.

“Are you coming?” she asks.

“Is it cold?”

“No, it’s nice!” She smiles and waves at him to join her.

He runs and jumps in, but the water is so cold that it almost knocks the breath out of him. He sputters when he comes up. “You are a little liar!” he yells, and splashes her.

She laughs. “This is a hot spring compared to the waters of Russia. You’re just a wimp.”

Something in him warms; he’s happy that she seems content, almost carefree. He's glad that he talked her into coming. Clint knows it won't fix everything, but he hopes it's a small start.

She asks him to race the length of the lake, and they swim back and forth for an hour, Natasha only beating him once.

She pouts at him as they get out of the water. "You cheated," she says, drying off her hair.

"In swimming? You kick my ass everyday. Now you know how it feels."

Natasha throws her towel at his face and walks back to the house, dirt caking around her wet, bare feet as she walks.

He takes his time drying off and hangs up their towels on the clothesline that someone strung up between two trees. When he gets inside, she's in dry clothes, sprawled on the couch and fast asleep, even though she said she didn’t want to. Natasha’s damp hair is hanging over the arm of the couch, and a strange temptation comes over him to touch it, to curl a finger in the strands, to know how it feels in his hands.

Clint resists, though. He takes a step back and suddenly feels a need to clear his head. So he leaves her a note and drives to a nearby supermarket to get enough food for the weekend.

When he comes back, she’s awake, but she’s staring at the ceiling, and she doesn’t move an inch, even after he announced he brought food. He’s putting milk in the fridge when he hears her say something, but he doesn’t understand it.

“What?” he asks.

“I’ve never gone swimming just for fun before.”

He closes the door of the refrigerator, unsure of where she’s going with this. “Okay?”

She sits up and looks at him. “When you took me to Rosy’s Diner a couple of weeks after we first left Russia, that was the first time I’d ever eaten a meal in a restaurant just to eat, without learning how to use dinner and wine to retrieve information.

“I don’t remember life with my parents. I’d like to think they were good to me, that they took care of me, but I don’t know. All I remember is Red Room, Black Widow Ops. Sazonov. I never did anything for pleasure. I’ve never walked on a beach or skated on a frozen lake. I don’t know what type of music I like. I don’t have a favorite movie. ” She looks down. “I don’t know who I am.”

Clint sits down next to her and brings his arms around her, holding onto her as tightly as he can.

“Tasha,” he begins, but wavers. He’s never been that great with words. They spew out before he can stop them when he’s angry and his temper gets the best of him, but times like this, it’s hard for him to get them out there. “I’ve… I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re the strongest person I know. You—you can be so fiery, yet so put-together, too. You’re funny and—and you’re beautiful. And too goddamn smart.” His hand finds her hair this time, smoothing it down where it’s scratching his chin. It’s frizzy from the lake water, but it’s still soft. “You have the rest of your life to figure out the details.”

She nods against his collarbone, but she doesn’t say anything else. He leans backward so that his back is resting against the couch, and she follows, tucking herself into his side. She falls asleep again, and because he doesn’t want to wake her, he closes his eyes to follow suit.

///

She drags him to a record store the next day, and she chats up the boy behind the counter, asking him for recommendations.

"Well, what type of music are you into?"

"I like all sorts," she smiles, sweet and coy. Clint rolls his eyes, flipping through a clearance bin of CDs.

The boy gives her a stack of truly awful punk stuff and explains to her that it’s good that she’s never heard of them.

“That means they haven’t sold out yet,” he explains to her.

“Natasha, look at this,” Clint says, because he can’t listen to this guy talk anymore.

“I’ll be right back,” she says to the kid, and Clint hadn’t even noticed that she’s played up her accent while talking to him.

“First step in finding yourself, never ask the advice of teenage boys. They don’t know shit. I’m in my twenties, and I barely know shit. Second of all, never listen to the music a teenage boy tells you to listen to. It is also shit. We’re going to buy you some classics, a couple of Top 40 albums to keep you hip, and we’ll keep hitting up record stores ‘til you find what you like. Don’t listen to that jackass.”

“Don’t ruin the fun, Barton. He’s kind of cute.” She’s joking, but he realizes she has a point. He’s getting in the way of her doing things that girls her age do.

“You pick out your music, and I’ll wait outside.”

It doesn’t take her long to come out with a plastic bag in hand.

“What’d you get?” he asks, getting into the car.

She smirks. “You’ll see.”

///

The Stones are her favorite. Well, her favorite so far. She did let the kid talk her into one of his albums, but she scrunches her nose during the first song, and then takes out the CD.

“I see that Clint Barton is an expert in life lessons. Don’t trust teenage boys’ music tastes.”

“I wouldn’t trust them at all, to be honest.”

“What were you like as a teenager?” She’s sitting on the floor, opened cases and liner notes spread all around her. He looks at her from the couch. They’ve never talked about him before, which he’s perfectly fine with.

“Angry,” he says, “like every other teenager.”

“Oh?” Her attention is on him now, and he looks away.

“My parents died when my brother and I were little. We,” he chuckles, “joined the fucking circus. What else are two kids going to do, you know? Anyway, Barney, my brother, was always caught in bad shit, no matter where we went. I pretty much raised myself. So I was angry. At my parents, at Barney, at God, at whoever.”

“How did you find S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“They found me. I was a good marksman, and my weapon doesn’t make much noise, so I was perfect for secret kills.”

“You could’ve killed me,” she says. “I didn’t know you were up there. You’re very good.”

“I didn’t, though,” he replies, and she gives him a soft smile.

///

During the next year, they watch more movies than Clint’s seen in his entire life, in every genre and decade. She abhors action films, as she’s unable to get past their flaws and unbelievable plots and maneuvers.

She sticks to her guns that the Rolling Stones is her favorite band of all time.

They go to Barcelona, Hong Kong, Mexico City; easy assassin jobs that Clint could do in his sleep, but he’s thankful for the quiet as she acclimates to her new life.

It’s strange how every decision involves her now, how she’s slipped her way into his life, how he can’t imagine not fighting by her side during every mission or watching her back from rooftops above.

That’s not to say they don’t fight because they do. Natasha exudes a cool exterior, but it can change instantly, at any time, especially if someone belittles her because of her youth. And if Clint’s in a shitty mood when she is, training turns into shouting, and ends with Natasha stomping out of the factory in a teenage rage.

But then he’ll have brief moments when he wonders what would’ve happened if she weren’t there, if he’d shot his arrow through her chest, if he’d watched her crumple onto the pile of bodies at her feet. His chest will seize at the thought, pain spiking within him, almost embarrassingly so. He’s never cared about anyone but Barney. Worrying about someone who isn’t his own blood is both foreign and frightening.

She’ll come back home shortly thereafter, neither of them willing to rehash what just happened. And he knows, he knows by the way she acts when she walks back in the door, that she was thinking the same thing he was.

_We’re nothing on our own._

///

It’s a cool October day when a jet picks them up and taxis them to the helicarrier. The first person they meet when they step off is their new handler.

“Phil Coulson,” he says, shaking Clint’s hand vigorously.

"Nice to meet you."

"I'm really looking forward to working together. You have a fascinating background." His smile is open, genuine, and Clint feels a little uncomfortable under the intensity of his gaze.

Natasha stands on her tiptoes to whisper in Clint's year. "He's certainly... eager, isn't he?" she asks. He pinches her side to silence her and then introduces her to Coulson.

Coulson's expression immediately changes to sympathy. "You are incredibly brave, Agent Romanoff. Your work in bringing down Sazonov is truly admirable."

"Romanoff?" Clint asks.

"Fury wants to Americanize me," she replies, "as if a name changes something."

"It's all part of the plan, Agent Barton. S.H.I.E.L.D. has great opportunities in store for Agent Romanoff."

Clint’s eyes narrow slightly while Coulson continues speaking to Natasha. He doesn't like the sound of that.

///

"What does Fury have up his sleeve?" Clint asks her. They're in her quarters aboard the helicarrier, and she's searching for a hair tie in her duffel bag.

"You know as much as I do."

"I don't like it," he replies.

She rolls her eyes and pulls her hair back. "You know I can handle myself, Barton."

“I know.” And he does. “I just...”

There’s a knock on the door before he can continue, and Natasha crosses the room to open it. Coulson pops his head in, his eyes moving between the two of them.

“Agent Romanoff, Director Fury would like to speak with you.”

Natasha looks at Clint with confusion before nodding to Coulson. “Okay.” Clint stands up to follow her, but Coulson stops him.

“He just needs Natasha,” he says with a smile, “we’ll be back.”

Clint clenches his jaw, but keeps his tongue in check. He has a practice room on board, so he grabs his bow and quiver and shoots until his arms ache and his fingers cramp, driving himself crazy trying not to think about what they have planned for her.

It’s dark when she finds him. She doesn’t speak at first; she simply grabs his bow from his hands and fires a few of her own arrows. Each hits their targets, but none are a perfect shot.

“I’ll be as good as you when I grow up,” she says in a purposely childish voice.

“Nat, what’s...” He trails off, unsure of what exactly he’s even asking.

“There’s a Russian sector of HYDRA. Fury wants me to infiltrate it.”

“Oh,” Clint says, and that doesn’t sound too bad. It’s nothing like the crazy stuff he was concocting in his mind. He’ll be on the sidelines, working down the hit list of enemies she gives him, both of them working together to break down the division bit by bit.

“It’s an actual spy gig,” she continues. “Working my way up in a human trafficking operation, until I get to the big leagues. It can... it’s going to take a couple of years.”

“Oh,” he says again, but he sees that she’s nervous, so there has to be more to it. “Are you doing this by yourself?”

“Well, Coulson will be my handler, and I’ll have a contact in Russia, but I’m the only spy.” She looks at him. “I’m going alone.” Natasha must see the look on his face; she reaches out to him. “Not because I want to, you have to know that.”

Clint wrenches his arm from her grasp, and walks out, a storm building inside him as he runs to Fury’s briefing room. Fury is sitting there when he arrives, almost like he’s just waiting for Clint to show up.

“Alone?” Clint yells. He hears Natasha coming up behind them, but his eyes never leave Fury’s face. “You’re sending a 16-year-old girl to spy on a HYDRA operation. Alone.”

“She agreed to the orders.”

“That’s bullshit! She’s not even legally old enough to make that sort of decision on her own.”

“I’m standing right here, you know,” Natasha says behind him, but Fury continues.

“Last time I checked, Agent Barton, you weren’t her legal guardian. She’s an emancipated minor. S.H.I.E.L.D. has allowed her to utilize her training to work on our side, and that’s why she’s going to Russia alone.”

“If you think I’m here because I have to be,” Natasha says, “or because my heart beats for S.H.I.E.L.D., you are mistaken, Director.” She steps forward now, between Clint and Fury. “I can leave at any moment, disappear off your radar as if I never existed. I choose to be here. And the only reason I don’t demand Barton’s presence in Russia is because the possibility of being found with an American would get both of us killed.”

“Natasha,” Clint starts, but she cuts him off with a harsh glance.

“If there’s nothing else, Director, I have a trip to pack for.”

Fury responds with a nod before watching her leave. He looks at Clint and smirks. “I think your girl can handle herself, Barton.” He stands. “We done here?”

///

Clint doesn’t go to her room, tries to give her some space. He tries to give himself some time to cool off, too. It’s hard when he doesn’t even know when she’s leaving, when he doesn’t even know if she’s mad at him for his argument with Fury.

She comes in when he’s trying to sleep, stepping inside his room without knocking.

“Are you calmer now?” she asks. His eyes are adjusted enough to the darkness to see her arms crossed in front of her chest.

He sits up and pats the bed next to him, even though he knows she can’t see. “Come here.”

“I meant what I said to Fury,” she says when she sits down. “I don’t know my contact yet, but she is Russian. Our meetings will be secret, but meeting with a Russian girl is less suspect than me spending all my time with an American man.”

“I know,” he says.

“You have to know...” She clears her throat. “You have to know that the idea of working without you now feels... We were taught to work alone. From day one. ‘The other girls are not your friends,’ they’d say. ‘Use one another,’ they’d say. And we did. It was all we knew. But now I know what it is like to trust. To know that someone has my back. To know that... you would die for me just as quickly as I’d die for you.” She whispers the last part, the words obviously hard to say. So Clint grabs her hands in his own, squeezes them once.

He wants to say, _Yes, yes, I’d do anything for you._ But instead he whispers, “I’ll be waiting for you while you save the world.”

///

She leaves after five days of debriefs and nights spent huddled over dossiers at Clint's side. They don't talk much, silent like their first days together, yet comfortable and familiar.

It’s cold when they walk to the jet. She’s in a peacoat and purple scarf, her hair tied in a braid down her back. The wind paints her cheeks a pretty shade of pink, and he drinks it all in, not yet ready to send her off to face the enemy.

“Let’s not,” Natasha says, when she has to leave. “Let’s not... you know.”

“Of course,” he replies because he wouldn’t be able to say goodbye even if he wanted to. So he hugs her, his fingers brushing her braid as her arms tighten around him. “Be safe.”

“Always,” she says into his ear before letting go.

“Come back, okay?”

She smiles. “I have to. I owe you a debt.”

///

He has two missions back to back, one on his own, and one with another agent. He does fine on his own, even though there’s a dull ache within him now. He realizes that she made it fun. Even though the work they do is serious and dangerous and scary, having her there made it enjoyable. Now, he just goes through the motions, missing her triumphant grin when they make it out alive.

The partnered job, though, doesn’t go so well. He’d gotten used to their synchronization, to Natasha’s training and her perfection in the field. He feels clumsy without her there as a balance, and he fucks up an important shot, almost getting both of them killed.

“She’s doing great you know,” Coulson tells him when Clint turns in his report, as if worrying for her safety is the problem. And he does worry, but despite his argument with Fury, he knows that she can handle herself when it comes down to it.

“Of course she is,” he replies. “We got used to working together, is all.”

Coulson nods, but he’s smart enough to see that Clint just misses her. So Coulson invites him out for a beer if they’re in town together, gets them tickets to a Sox game the one time they have a gig in Boston. Clint always says yes, grateful for the distractions that Coulson tries so hard to provide.

///

It’s the worst when he’s home, seeing her stuff everywhere, little things throughout the day that make him think of her. He realizes he’s losing it when he sees a Stones documentary on TV and almost turns to call for her to come watch it.

So he leaves, gets in the Camaro and drives to Rosy’s. Their usual waitress is there, a woman at least twenty years his senior but fairly pretty. She frowns when she sees him.

“Where’s your sister?” she asks, and they’ve never told her anything about their relationship, but Clint lets her assume what she wants.

“She’s back with our mom,” he replies.

He must be sporting some sad, pathetic look on his face because she’s extra sweet to him through his whole dinner, and gives him a discount when he gets the check. He thinks she’s mothering him until she tells him that she gets off in half an hour if he wants to do something.

He fucks her on the floor of her living room, and he realizes, when she has to get up to find a condom, that it’s been two years since he’s actually been with someone. He shakes his head at himself and gives a depreciating laugh.

“You okay, honey?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he lies. “I’m fine.”

///

A year after Natasha leaves, he gets a postcard from Moscow, her writing messy on the back of it. _It's so very lonely, you're 2,000 light years from home._

Clint laughs because he hates that song, and she knows it. He’s not a big Stones fan in general, but that one is especially weird. His address isn’t even on the back of the card, so he isn’t sure how it got into the mailbox. He slips the postcard under his mattress and plays that god-awful song on repeat until he falls asleep.

///

Natasha turns 18 when Clint’s in South Africa, and he thinks they’d probably be on a beach somewhere to celebrate if they were together. He hopes she’s got some friends there, or that she can get a drink with her contact, Ana, to celebrate.

Coulson calls the next day and tells him that Natasha didn’t show for her contact meeting.

“What?”

“Ana waited the whole night, she even slept there.”

“Fuck.”

“But it doesn’t have to mean anything, Clint. She is supposed to be a part of HYDRA now, maybe they took her out to celebrate. It was her birthday.”

“You think I don’t fucking know that? Jesus.” He stands up, paces the floor of his hotel room, shaking with fear. “Goddamn it, what does this even mean? How long do we have to wait before we go and make sure she isn’t dead?”

“She has 48 hours to make contact. I’m en route to get you and bring you back to base.”

“So we can sit around with our thumbs up our asses? I want to go to Moscow now.”

“Clint, I want you to sit down and take a deep breath and _think_. Think about how we could be compromising everything to pull her out right now.” He does sit down, a bit begrudged that Coulson knows he’s pacing around the room, but thinking is a little difficult at the moment. “You know her better than anyone, you know she’s the best, that she can get out of any situation. Right?”

“Yeah,” he concedes.

“We’ll be there in three hours,” Coulson says and hangs up.

He packs his bag, cleans up the room, and puts on a soccer game. He fidgets, wringing his hands, walking from door to window, back and forth. Then he can’t stand being inside anymore, so he walks to a nearby market and buys a fifth of whiskey to keep him company while he waits for Coulson.

His mind is in overload, creating every twisted, warped scenario that she could possibly be facing right now, and the alcohol probably isn’t helping. He doesn’t realize how much he’s drunk until he stands to answer the knock on the door.

Coulson’s eyes rake over his body, and he sighs. “You’re a mess.”

Clint smiles. “I am,” he replies, and then Coulson steps forward and gives him a hug. Clint falls into it, not realizing he needed some human contact until he gets it.

“She’s going to be okay. She still has time,” Coulson says softly before pulling away. Coulson grabs Clint’s bag and bow case for him, and Clint stumbles after him to the car.

“We’re flying to Moscow,” Coulson tells him in the car. “But we’re not making a move until it’s time. It’s just a precaution.”

“Okay,” Clint replies. He can live with that.

He gets sick on the jet, and Coulson’s right beside him with a bottle of water and a comforting hand on his back. Clint appreciates the gesture, even though he hates throwing up in front of people and would rather be left alone.

“I think I might kill her if we do find her alive, just for putting me through this,” Clint tries to say jokingly, but it comes out broken and desperate.

“I’ve seen her fight, Agent Barton. I’d like to see you try.”

///  
They’re in Moscow for two hours when Coulson receives a message.

“She’s fine,” he says, and Clint exhales and closes his eyes. “A little beat up, apparently, but fine.”

“What the fuck happened?”

Coulson opens his laptop and looks for the report. “KGB run-in. HYDRA’s not exactly loyal to Russia, not loyal to anyone really. This is good, though; if KGB is making hits, that means she’s actually weakened them. She could be home within the year.”

///

It takes five months.

Clint gets a call at three in the morning, his hand fumbling for the phone in the haze of sleep. He sees Coulson's name on the caller ID, though, and it instantly sobers him.

"Barton."

"We need you to come in."

"Is everything okay?"

"That depends. Are you ready to bring Agent Romanoff back home?"

Clint exhales a shaky breath. "That's it? She's done?"

"Division take-down in two days, and you're on the team."

"That's the best fucking news I've ever heard."

///

Clint isn’t tasked with much besides disarming and making non-lethal shots (“We want to bring in as many of these guys for questioning as possible, let’s keep the shooting to a minimum.”) It’s a good thing since killing dozens of HYDRA agents is hardly his priority right now.

He straps his bow to his back, and draws his gun; the rooms and hallways are tight and narrow, and it’s easier to just defend and injure without the bow. He hears Coulson behind him, instructing S.H.I.E.L.D. members to round up downed HYDRA agents. Then he hears fighting up ahead, and runs around the corner to see if he can help.

And he sees her. Her red hair is long and wild down her back, tangled from fighting. She’s bending over an unconscious man, strapping his hands and feet with cable ties to secure him for pick-up.

“Tasha,” he says, and she whips her gun on him, the one he gave her, before she even turns. “Natasha, wai--” but then she finally sees him.

“Clint,” she whispers, lowering her gun and standing. And she’s... she’s taller, her hips fuller, her mouth redder. Her black sweater hugs her frame a hell of a lot differently than it would have two years ago. She left too skinny, too young, and now... now she’s--

Natasha runs to him and grabs his hand to pull him down the hall. “You going to stand there all day, Barton? We’ve got a job to do.”

///

If he’s honest with himself, Clint was scared that it’d be different now. That she’d outgrow him, or that they’d lose the groove they had when fighting together. He can see now that she’s a better fighter; the two years with HYDRA helped hone her skills, but she still remembers how he fights, and she still remembers his weaknesses that she needs to cover.

By the end, they have 32 agents in custody, seven dead, and four escaped.

Coulson finds Clint and Natasha shortly after and immediately moves to give her a hug.

“What on earth have they been feeding you? You’re like,” Coulson holds her back and looks at her. “A real woman now.”

“Thank you... I think,” she says, rolling her eyes toward Clint. Clint laughs, but Coulson has a point. He was always too caught up in missing her and wanting her back to think that with age comes aging, that she wouldn’t be the same girl that left him on a jet to Russia.

Natasha doesn’t say much on the ride to their safe house, and anything she does say is directed to Coulson about the mission. Clint has pictured tonight over and over, and never once was she so quiet and reserved in his mind. Maybe he was wrong; maybe they still fight the same way, but everything else will be different.

The wind is icy when he gets out of the van, chilling him through his suit. He runs into the house as quickly as he can, straight to the room he used before the mission. He’s changing into a warm hoodie when Natasha comes in.

“Hey,” he says. She closes the door, crossing the room in two strides, and wraps her arms around him so tightly it almost hurts. It takes him a second to return the embrace, but when he does, his mind can only focus on how different she feels in his arms. The curve of her waist, the press of her chest against him. He shakes his head as if it’ll clear his thoughts.

“What?” she whispers, finally letting go.

“Nothing,” he replies. “Nothing. You’re just so tall now.”

“Yeah?” She reaches out and runs her fingers through his hair. “I think you’re getting gray,” she says with a malicious grin.

He smacks her hand away, smiling. “If I am, it’s your fault. Your little birthday stunt aged me about ten years.”

“Hmm?” She thinks. “Oh, yes. The KGB. Just a couple of scratches, Barton. I was fine.”

“We went to Moscow,” he says, and he can see by the look on her face that she had no idea. “I was just waiting for your full 48 hours of radio silence so I could take you out of there and bring you home.” He sits on the bed. “I was happy you were okay, but part of me just wanted an excuse to get you out of there.”

“I wouldn’t have let you anyway. I’d put too much work into that just to let it go at that point. But...” she smiles softly. “It might’ve been worth it to have seen you.”

“Yeah?” he asks, hating how hopeful his voice sounds, hating that he needs to hear if she missed him.

“Yeah. Mostly so you could bring me a good hamburger and my music, though.”

“Your music? Oh, sorry, I was doing some spring cleaning and threw those CDs out.” Clint is warmer now that he’s been in the house, so he takes off his hoodie and switches it for a t-shirt.

“I may be very exhausted right now, but murdering you is not out of the question.” She walks to the door and opens it, but then turns back around. “Any chance you've got an extra t-shirt, Agent? I obviously don't have anything with me except what I'm wearing."

"Uh, yeah." He grabs his bag. His hand reaches for a white undershirt, but his mind flashes with the image of Natasha standing before him, her nipples dark and visible under the fabric. He pushes the shirt aside. "Take this one," he says, taking the black one off his back.

She gives him a confused look. "Well, I don't want to take it if you don't have anything else."

"I do, it's fine. Take it." He holds it out, not quite meeting her eyes.

"Okay," she replies, elongating the _o_.

When she comes back, Clint is sitting on the bed. The shirt falls to her bare thighs, but he does a pretty good job of not focusing on that. She turns off the light and sits right next to him, their legs pressed from hip to knee.

"Do we still live at the factory?" She asks.

"Yeah, haven't left. I mean," he runs his hand through his hair. "You don't have to live there. With me. Anymore. You can take care of yourself now."

He feels her shrug and she laughs softly. "Where else would I go? Unless you've got a hot babe living there now, and I'd be in the way."

"No! No, not... no hot babes. What sane woman would live in that dump?" Natasha elbows him. "You're welcome to come back, Nat. Just letting you know you didn't have to feel obligated to."

“Are you okay?” She asks.

“Yeah.”

“I know haven’t seen you in two years, but you seem a little off.” She touches his leg, obviously trying to comfort him if he needs it, but that’s just a bad idea. So he grabs her hand and entwines it with his own.

“I’ve spent the last two years waiting for you to be done. And now you’re here. And you’re... it’s just hard to process.”

She bumps his shoulder with her own before standing up to pull down the blankets. “Are you jetlagged? Can you sleep? I’m so tired.”

Clint’s wired from the raid, from this new Natasha, but he says yes anyway.

“Come here,” she says. She lies on the bed and pulls him down behind her, moving his arms to wrap around her waist. Her hair smells earthy, sweaty from the raid, but with an underlying sweetness. He closes his eyes and his fingers itch to trail up and under her shirt, to draw circles on her belly, to trace upward until his fingertips brush the underside of her breasts, and--

He angles his hips away from her and wills sleep to come.

///

“So much paperwork,” Natasha says, huddled over her final report for the HYDRA Russian division takeover. “I bet I wouldn’t have to do this much if I worked for the KGB.”

“In Soviet Russia, your paperwork does you.”

She looks up. “What?”

“Nothing,” Clint replies.

Natasha has been in debrief after debrief for three days on the helicarrier. She and Fury even had a video conference with The Council.

"If they think that bringing down this division is the beginning of the end for HYDRA, they're naive. It's called HYDRA for a reason," she tells Clint.

"Well, they've got to start somewhere," he replies.

"You're in a mood," she says, crinkling up a piece of paper and throwing it at him.

Clint is, well, he's bored. They've barely seen each other since they've reached headquarters, and Natasha is ridiculously focused when she's in business mode. He’s ready to go home and try to get things back to normal. Because all of this boredom allows his mind to drift and wander to places it really shouldn’t.

He’s mad at himself, which is making him short with everyone else. Coulson keeps asking him what’s wrong, saying he thought Clint would be happier with Natasha being back. Clint would be if she’d stop running around in a S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform which doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination, and his imagination has been pretty hyperactive as of late anyway.

“We can go home,” she says, placing the report in a folder and standing up. “I’m turning this in and then we’re free for the foreseeable future. Maybe then you’ll be in a better mood.” She walks by and smacks him on the head with the file.

He goes to his quarters, packs up his bag and his bow. Fury stops by and tells him they’ve got a week before their next mission. So much for foreseeable future. But he’ll take it.

They borrow a S.H.I.E.L.D. car when they get back to drive home. He looks at Natasha when he pulls up and sees a small smile on her lips as she gazes at the factory.

He gets how she feels. That the factory is home, even though it’s a dump and it’s not even a house. He doesn’t ever want to leave it, to move into some suburban nightmare with cookie cutter houses and manicured lawns. And this small, or not so small, part inside him doesn’t want her to ever leave it either.

He’d put clean sheets on her bed, made it up as nicely as he knew how. Her stuff is still on the nightstand exactly where she left it, a couple of candles, a stack of CDs.

“You haven’t been sleeping down here?” she asks.

He shrugs. “I like the loft.”

“You build yourself a little nest up there, Hawk Boy?”

“Hawk Boy? Seriously?”

“You spend the majority of every job watching people up high like some bird of prey.”

“There’s got to be a better name than Hawk Boy.”

She shrugs one shoulder. “We’ll work on it.” 

///

She has to go shopping later for everything from shampoo to shoes, reminiscent of the time they had to do this four years ago. They end the night at Rosy’s; the waitress smiles when she sees Natasha.

“Your sister’s back!” she says. She and Clint have slept together here and there since the first time; it’s nothing serious. A distraction, a way to blow off some steam.

“Yeah, she’s 18 now,” he replies. “Doesn’t have to stay with our mom anymore.”

“Clint doesn’t talk much, so it’s not like he said anything, but he surely did miss you. I know he’s happy you’re back.”

“Sister?” Natasha asks when the waitress walks away with their order.

“Well, she--”

“Also, how does she know how much you talk?” Natasha raises a suggestive eyebrow.

“Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they sometimes have conversations.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “I didn’t know you had a thing for older ladies.”

“It’s not a... _thing_. It just happened.”

“Mmhm.”

She comes back with their food a little later, and Natasha gives her a sweet smile. “You know, I didn’t put two and two together. Clint talks about you all the time.” He’s not sure how she does it, but every remnant of her Russian accent is gone.

“Oh,” the waitress replies, looking at Clint with hope in her eyes. Clint could kill Natasha. This thing with the waitress was nothing and now she’ll want more, now he’ll have to let her down.

“Nat, stop,” he says with a forced smile, trying to play it off as ‘my sister sure is embarrassing’ instead of ‘I’m going to murder her later.’

The waitress pats Natasha on the shoulder. “I’m glad he has someone to talk to. It’s not good to keep to yourself all the time.” She smiles at Clint again before walking off.

“Wow,” he says. “You just made that an incredibly awkward and difficult situation.”

“It was just a joke,” she replies, dipping a fry in ketchup.

“I slept with her like, five times. And now I talk about her constantly? Now she thinks we have something we don’t. Now she’s going to want me to meet her kids, and go out on dates. She’ll want flowers and jewelry, and you,” he lowers to a whisper. “You know what we do. I don’t have time for that. So now I’ll have to break things off and she’ll wonder why men always leave her. She’ll wonder what she did wrong, when she didn’t do anything wrong at all.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, ‘oh.’”

“I’m sorry, Clint.”

He throws some cash on the table. “Eat your food. I’ll be waiting outside.”

///

She changes into a sports bra and sweat pants when they get home. She walks into the common area and stands between him and the TV with her hands on her hips. “I know you’re mad at me. Let’s fight it out.”

“What?”

“You know, fight?” She brings her fists in front of her face and punches one outward.

“I’m not going to fight you.”

“Fight. Spar. Train. Semantics. Let’s go.” She turns off the TV and brings the mats to the middle of the room.

Natasha hits him in the gut the second he steps onto the mat. She tries to punch him in the face but he grabs her fist, wrenching her arm behind her and pressing her to the ground. She kicks her leg back and up and her foot hits him in the head, knocking him off her. Then she jumps on top of him, and before he knows it, The sparring turns into some sort of wrestling match, grappling at each other like they’re kids, like he and Barney used to.

He flips her over and she laughs, and he finds himself smiling back, forgetting what started all of this to begin with. Clint holds her down, and she bites him, hard, hard enough that he flings his arm away. Natasha flips them over and straddles him. Her hands grip his arms and she presses her body against him, brushing against his hardening cock through their pants. Both of them gasp, and she stills, looking down at him. He’s paralyzed, overwhelmed with want and fear, simultaneously needing to throw her off and to pull her closer.

Her eyes trail to his lips, licking her own as she does so, and finally, finally his brain catches up to what’s going on. He gently pushes her back when she leans down to kiss him.

“Tasha,” he whispers. “I can’t.”

“I’m not blind. I see how you look at me now. I know you want it.”

“It’s not right.”

“Come on, Clint. I’m not a child anymore.”

“I know that,” he says. She’s still straddling his hips, so he moves her over and sits up, putting a couple of feet between them. “But we didn’t just meet. I’ve known you since you were still a kid.”

“It’s different now.”

“Is it? You were 14 years old and you stuck your hand down my pants because you thought it was your duty or something. I’m not going to...” He angers so suddenly he has to take a deep breath. “I’m not going to be like that sick bastard who made you like that.”

“You are not Sazonov,” she says, her voice shaking. “There’s a big difference in touching nine-year-old girls and having a consensual sexual relationship with an 18-year-old woman.”

“I was basically your guardian. I fucking took care of you. And now I want you. Constantly. How is that okay?”

“I am not a little girl.” Her voice is icy now, her eyes narrowed. “Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have offered to suck your dick when I was 14, but I could’ve taken care of myself. I just single-handedly brought down an entire division of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s greatest enemy. I thought I’d come back and we’d be done with this petty argument that I’m too young to fight, to kill, to fuck whomever I want.” She points to herself. “I make that decision, not you.”

She stands up and walks out of the factory, slamming the door behind her.

///

Twenty-four hours later, and she’s not back. She didn’t take a wallet or her phone, so he doesn’t know where she slept the night before. Of course, he didn’t sleep at all, so maybe she didn’t either.

He’s antsy and tired of sitting around wondering when she’ll come home. So he calls up Coulson and asks him if Fury’s got a small job he can do before their mission next week.

“We've got a lead on an illegal weapons manufacturer from one of the HYDRA agents in custody. Could use an extra set of eyes,” Coulson replies. So Clint grabs his bow and quiver and heads to the airport since the team is already in Argentina. He leaves Natasha a note on his way out the door.

It’s supposed to be easy. A break-in at night with security overrides, a simple look around to assess the situation. Of course, the mission Clint actually volunteers himself for turns ugly ten minutes after they walk in.

He’s never worked with this group of agents, but they’re solid and efficient. That can’t save them from a trap, though. He’s trailing behind their group with his bow at his side when Natasha’s voice comes through their ear-coms.

“Clint! You and your team have got to get out of there. It’s a setup.”

“Fuck, let’s go,” he whispers, turning to run toward the exit. The lights switch on overhead and they’re surrounded, at least three agents to every S.H.I.E.L.D. member, each of them with aimed guns.

He almost laughs when he realizes that he and Natasha would take all of them down if she were here, or at least die trying. This isn’t his team, though, and he’s not going to risk them like that. A man orders them to put down their weapons, and he looks at his own guys, each of them nodding to disarm themselves.

“Just do whatever they tell you, Clint,” Natasha tells him through the ear-com. “Cooperate.” He sets down his bow slowly, and raises his hands, allowing the HYDRA agents to come forward and rid them of their other weapons. “Stay alive,” she whispers.

And then he gets a pistol whip to the back of the head.

///

He wakes up with a throbbing head, and his legs and arms strapped to a metal chair.

“Good morning.” He hears a woman’s voice, accented, but he can’t place its origin. She steps in front of him with her arms at her side. She is older, but in good shape, her graying hair pulled into a tight bun.

“This can be very easy for you, Agent Barton, or very difficult.” Eastern European, maybe? “That’s up to you.” She crooks a finger and two men walk toward her, big and beefy, and in all likelihood, stereotypically dumb.

“I have a bone to pick with someone who is apparently one of your fellow agents. A certain Black Widow?”

Clint looks up at her and smiles. “I’m arachnophobic; I try to stay away from spiders.”

“Oh, you’re a charming one.”

“You ever have that dream when, like, four-foot-tall spiders are chasing after you and then your feet get stuck to the floor and you can’t run anymore? No? Just me? Trust me, it’s terrifying.”

One of the guys steps forward and punches him twice in the gut, hard, and Clint can hear the crack of a rib.

“My mind always tries to make it logical, too,” he says, barely above a whisper, hunched over in agony. “My brain will tell itself that it’s some scary genetic mutation and that third-grader-sized spiders really do exist now. And didn’t you know...” he coughs and seering pain from his abdomen overwhelms him. He takes a couple of shallow breaths, wincing as he does so. “Don’t you remember buying these cool, melting shoes yesterday, Clint? That’s why these scary-ass spiders are going to eat you alive.”

The other guy punches him in face, and his head whips backward. Clint’s pretty sure he just broke his nose.

“Natalia,” the woman says, grabbing his chin roughly. “Our agents who escaped saw the two of you together, so let’s not play coy. Where is she?”

“To be completely honest, not that you’ll believe me, but last time I saw her she walked out the door in some teenaged hissy fit, and I haven’t seen her since.” God, he’d like a drink and some vicodin and a week-long nap. “Have you searched for all known aliases? Notice you never see her and Carmen Sandiego in the same place at the same time.”

She smiles, malicious and downright scary. “Please pay Agent Barton for all of his helpful information.”

She walks out of the room and the men unshackle him. He’s confused at first, but then he figures out that it’s a hell of a lot easier to beat the shit out of him if he’s huddled on the floor than if he’s strapped to a chair.

///

He wakes up on a concrete floor, unable to move, the smell of piss strong around him. Every breath is excruciating, every second awake is unbearable. So he drifts off again, vaguely recognizing the sound of gunshots in the distance before he sleeps.

///

He hears his name, a cool touch to his forehead. _C’mon, c’mon you have to wake up._

“No,” he mumbles because he just wants to sleep.

He hears her laugh, _her_ , and he feels himself smile.

“Open your eyes, Barton.”

One of his eyes is swollen shut, but his other flutters open and sees her leaning over him, blood splattered and smeared on her face, her eyes wet with tears. He’s not sure if the blood is hers or someone else’s, and he really doesn’t want to think about it.

“I feel like Fury,” he tells her, and she laughs again.

“Hush, don’t speak. We’re going to get you to a hospital, okay? Try to stay awake for me, Clint.”

“Tasha,” he tries to find her hand and she laces their fingers together. “I l-- I love you so goddamn much.”

“Shhh.” She leans forward and kisses his forehead. “Don’t speak. Just rest.”

He really does try to stay awake for her sake, but he doesn’t last very long.

///

It’s too bright. He smells bleach. He’s thirsty as hell. His throat is dry, and he coughs, which turns out to be a bad idea because, yeah, those ribs are still cracked.

“Let me get you some water,” he hears Natasha say, and then she nudges a straw into his mouth to drink.

“Jesus Christ,” he says. “I’d bitch that I’m not an invalid, but I’m pretty sure moving isn’t on my body’s to-do list for a while.”

“I’m most worried about those ribs,” she answers. “You’re lucky you didn’t puncture a lung.”

“What’s the rest of my damage?” He finally opens his eyes, both of them, though the left is still a bit swollen. Her hair is messy and there’s a hospital blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

“Internal bleeding, concussion, fractured radius, two broken ribs, a broken nose, and--.”

“A partridge in a pear tree? Remind me to never volunteer for a mission again.” 

She moves closer and sits on the edge of the bed. “If you would’ve died,” she says shakily, “because of our stupid argument--”

He brings a finger to her lips to silence her, and she grabs his hand and kisses his palm.

"We've got to get used to this, right?" He strokes his thumb over her cheek. "You're a spy, I'm a hired gun. Near-death experiences are par for the course."

"Says the man who had a meltdown when I missed a contact meeting."

"Coulson exaggerates."

Natasha raises one eyebrow in disbelief.

He's tired again already, his mind fuzzy from whatever they're injecting into his veins.

“Sleep, Barton,” she says, and he obeys.

///

It’s dark the next time Clint wakes, but the light from the window is enough to see Natasha sleeping in the chair. Her legs are curled under her and her neck is at an obviously uncomfortable angle. It takes a lot of effort to maneuver himself all the way to the edge of his bed, enough to leave him breathless and frustrated with himself.

“Natasha,” he says, realizing she isn’t actually asleep when she sits up so quickly.

“You okay? You need something?”

“Come here,” he says. She stands up and walks to the wrong side of the bed. “No, over here. Come lay down.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea. I don’t want to jostle you or anything.”

He rolls his eyes. “Just get over here.” Natasha comes around and toes off her shoes before getting on the bed. He wraps his good arm around her and she scoots closer to lie right beside him.

“What happened?” he asks her.

“I got your note and called Coulson. He told me you were following a lead. I wasn’t going to sit around doing nothing either, so I went to base. When I got there, I asked him details on the mission and he told me the information from the HYDRA agent. I knew right away that it was false. Of course, it was too late.” She sighs. “We got a crew together and got there as quickly as we could.

“I was sure you’d be dead,” she continues. “We found the other agents of your team first. All dead. Then I saw you there, and you...” It takes her a couple of minutes to continue. “It’s strange to be thankful that all they did was beat you, but I am.”

“They wanted information from me. That’s why I was still alive.”

“Oh? For what?”

“The whereabouts of the Black Widow,” he replies. He expects questions, a response, but she says nothing, only the sudden frigidness of her body betraying anything.

“What?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “Nothing.”

“Hey,” he says, reaching over with his casted arm to tip her chin up. He looks at her, unable to read her face, even when his eyes meet hers. His thumb brushes over her lips and she presses a kiss against it, looking up at him as she does so. He knows right then that he’s lost to her. That she somehow slipped through his defenses, that she owns every single inch of him.

He leans in presses his lips to hers softly; once, twice. Her tongue flicks at his mouth and Clint opens to it, cradling the back of her head. She tastes like coffee and her lips feel so soft against his own. He wants. He wants so badly to touch her, to taste her everywhere, to learn what drives her crazy.

Her head moves, bumping his nose with her own, and he hisses, breaking their kiss.

“Oh fuck, I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry. That was stupid.” She kisses the corner of his mouth. “I got ahead of myself.”

“It’s fine.”

“Are you fine?” she asks, leaning back to see his face. “Are you battling an internal freak-out?”

“I think whatever drugs they have me on prohibits all internal freak-outs.”

“Good. I’ll save that information for future use.”

///

Clint’s stir-crazy and ready to leave the hospital a couple of days later, but it takes another week for them to release him.

It’s a long flight back to the US, even though Natasha scores them first class tickets. “You’d think S.H.I.E.L.D. could send someone to fly us back,” he says on the plane, but she doesn’t respond.

He’s embarrassingly unsteady on his feet, so Natasha buys him a cane, some terrible purple, sparkly number. “The color suits you,” she tells him when he tests it out.

“Just wait until I’m able to use it as a weapon,” he replies. Though who knows how long it will take him to heal up enough to walk without every part of his body protesting, especially since he’s off the good drugs now. “I’m sure Fury’s flipping his shit that I’m out of commission.”

“He’ll live,” she says, her voice cold and absolute. He opens his mouth to question her, but decides against it.

Standing for any long periods of time is still difficult, but weeks of sponge baths is getting really fucking old. “Maybe I should get one of those old people shower chairs,” he says one morning. “My sense of pride and dignity is pretty much nonexistent these days anyway.” He’s been sleeping in her bed since the loft is out of the question, but they haven’t done anything since the night in the hospital.

Natasha stands up and holds out her hand. He takes it and she pulls him up, wrapping her arm around his middle to keep him steady before walking to the bathroom.

“Take off your clothes,” she says after she wraps up his cast to keep it dry. She turns on the water and slips her shirt over her head.

Natasha turns to face him, and his breath catches in his throat. She’s... she’s gorgeous. Her nipples are pebbled from the cool air, and he wants to cup her breasts in his hands, feel them full and heavy against his palms. She slips off her pants and panties in one go and steps forward to grab his shirt.

“Going to make me do everything?” Natasha asks before taking it off. Her hand brushes his cock when she pulls down his briefs and a moan escapes his lips. She ignores it, as if this were clinical and necessary, but he knows she’s aching for it, too.

She steps into the shower and grabs his arm to steady him as he follows her. “You okay?” she asks.

“That depends on your definition of ‘okay.’”

She still ignores his response, but her eyes do trail down to his cock and she answers with a smirk.

She washes his hair for him while his arms are wrapped around her. It really shouldn’t be hot in theory, but it apparently is because Clint’s crazed with arousal, her body pressed so close to his own. Then she trails a bar of soap lightly over his skin, extra gentle over injured areas, leaving suds in its wake.

She soaps up his cock with her hand, stroking up and down, thumb rubbing over the head. Breathing hard still hurts, but Jesus Christ, he really doesn’t care right now.

“If you don’t stop soon, this is going to be over way too quickly,” he tells her. She pulls her hand away and kisses him softly, a grin on her lips.

She dries him off when they step out, trailing drops of water with her tongue, running her fingertips over his shoulders and kissing along his spine.

“Come here,” he says, wanting to kiss her so damn badly, but she takes him back to the bed, pressing him to lie on his back, and she removes the covering off his cast.

She straddles him, her cunt brushing the tip his cock, wet and smooth, and he’s desperate with want. Everything leading up to this, him saving her and her saving him, the worry and fear, was all for this. For them. He was stupid to think she’s the same girl he almost killed so long ago.

She leans down and kisses him, her tongue tasting his, lips moving against each other. She bites his bottom lip before she pulls away and lowers herself onto on his cock. Her breathy moan is delicious when he enters her, and the next is just as good. She grabs onto the window sill above the bed and shifts her hips slowly, looking straight at him as she does so.

“Tasha,” he whispers, “Natasha.” He reaches his hand between them between them and he rubs at her clit, making her shudder above him.

“Fuck.” She tilts her head back, her eyes closing as she loses herself in a fast rhythm. He’s hurting, hurting everywhere, every breath inducing pain, but nothing could stop this right now. 

Her cries are louder now, her hips losing their rhythm, and he knows she’s close. “Yeah, that’s it. You feel so good.I can’t wait to taste you, to suck on your clit, to run my tongue along your cunt.”

She’s so pretty when she comes, her brows knit together, and she bites her bottom lip, as if it’s too much to take in. Her cunt seizes his cock tighter, and seeing her like that is enough to send him over the edge, pleasure white-hot and burning within him as he comes inside of her.

She’s shaking when she slides off of him, and he kisses her, softly, trying his hardest to ignore the ache of his body.

He turns to face her, wincing as he does so. She looks up at him with wide eyes.

“What?” he asks.

Her jaw clenches before she answers. “I don’t want to do this anymore. No more S.H.I.E.L.D. or HYDRA or Red Room or anything. I want us to go to Malaysia or Tokyo and never look back.”

“What? Why?”

“They did this to you because of me. I made HYDRA angry, and so they nearly killed you. I thought you _were_ dead. Do you know how I—how it felt to almost lose you? I’ve pissed off a lot of other people, Clint, and if I keep doing this, that list will only get longer. And I can’t... I can’t deal with that again.

“And Fury, Fury uses both of us, uses all of us. They didn’t even think to do satellite surveillance on that supposed weapons plant before sending you in there? We are disposable to all of them, and I don’t want to fucking do it anymore.”

“Hey,” he says, rubbing her arm. “Coulson had no idea. I asked him for the assignment.”

“I’m not including him in that. Of course Coulson is one of us.”

“How would we even survive?”

“I have access to money. That’s not a concern.”

He gives her a kiss. “And what would we do? Open up a restaurant? Sell insurance?” She looks away and shrugs. “We’d live in constant fear of being found, either by S.H.I.E.L.D. or something worse. We’d always be looking behind us, never trusting anyone. We can’t go two days without itching for a job, a hit, a mission.

“We were made to do this, Nat. Trained. We can’t be anything else. Is the idea of running off with you to some crazy location tempting as hell? Of course. But we are who we are. So we keep doing what we’ve been doing, but we just look out for ourselves, now.”

“I told Fury my loyalty wasn’t to S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she says. “I offered everything to S.H.I.E.L.D., but it was for you.” She touches his face. “My loyalty has always been to you. It will always be to you.”

He looks at her and hears the _I love you_ that he knows she’ll never say. So he kisses her deeply to show her that she doesn’t have to.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic, as usual, is dedicated to my own Natacha. Bisoux!


End file.
